28-Aug-2004 -- On this day I got up earlier than usual, because I wanted to visit this point and be back for lunch.

It was a clear summer day, I came from south Burgenland, passed Eisenstadt, the capital of Burgenland and between the villages of Gattendorf and Zurndorf east of the Burgenland Bundesstrasse B10 I located the point. The point lies about 200m east from the road in a beet field, close to a maize field in the north. GPS shows the zeros.

There were some confluence visitors living in the region, many real big grasshoppers, some hares, and on the other side of the street a farmer working in his field.

The landscape to the east is very flat, to the west hilly. This seams to be a good place for generate electric energy with windmills, there are plenty of them.
Close to Bad Tatzmannsdorf, where I spent my holidays, I passed the small town of Bernstein. From a viewpoint right over the town you have a great view of the region. Bad Tatzmannsdorf is a well knwon health resort in Austria with a mineral spring.

Burgenland is the most eastern federal state of Austria. Most of the inhabitants are german speaking, but there is a Croation, a Hungarian and a Roma minority living in Burgenland. For the visitor this is obvious because some traffic signs with village names are bilingual.

After world war I (1914-1918) the Austrian-Hungarian monarchy broke, Austria was the loser of the war and lost large parts of its territory. In the treaties of St. Germain and Trianon (1919-1920) Burgenland was awarded to Austria and Ödenburg (hungarian: Sopron) should have become the capital. But the Hungarian gouvernment did not give up this part of Burgenland, there were severe bloody conflicts with regular and partisan troops, and at least Hungary achieved a repetition of a refernendum in the region of Ödenburg. This referndum ended with a 65% vote for Hungary, and so Burgenland lost its
planned capital Ödenburg.

In the meantime the Iron curtain has fallen, and the traditional close relations to Ödenburg and Hungary are more active than ever. Sopron is very often visited by tourists from Vienna and trade is flourishing because of the lower prices. So it is often called "Shop-run" (which is the hungarian pronounciation of Sopron).